Social Skills And Children On The Autism Spectrum

This article all about social skills and children on the autism spectrum. Social skills are not only to teach our children how to ‘perform’ or ‘act’ in society, social skills are also teaching our children the art of reading body language, facial expressions and those subtle cues the human race uses to communicate, so our children can move a lot more smoothly through their interactions with society and have less opportunity to be used and mistreated, either by being manipulated for something they have or used to do something that could potentially get your child into a lot of trouble.

It is safe guarding our children.

Teaching social skills to kids on the autism spectrum does not have to be painful, boring or expensive. As parents we have everyday experiences to teach our kids social skills.

Examples;

• Sitting at the car lights – have a sticky beak at the cars around you and engage your child to look as well. Make it fun by guessing what each person may be thinking and pointing it out on their face – example; “I think that man is frustrated to have to go home to the yucky food his wife may be cooking. See how his nose is turned up slightly like he has smelt something bad, a slight frown on his forehead”. That the child will giggle and the lesson teaching will be fun, not draining.

• Buy a milk shake and sit in a food court at the shopping center – again, have a guess as to what people are thinking, doing, where they may be rushing too and so on. Again it is light hearted and gets everyone who is playing this game to realise just how differently we all can see things and interpret things.

• Watching videos – pause and guess throughout the movie. Sometimes if a child gets irritated the parent can ‘play dumb’. Pretend that you don’t know what the person’s body language is showing and get your child to ‘help you’.

• Walking around the park – now our children may complain about having to go outside, yet in the end they will enjoy themselves. Repeat the same pattern as above, and guess what other walkers are thinking or what emotion they are showing on their faces. You may find it is not as easy as we think.

• Narrating all the things you are doing around the house, giving the label to your facial expressions etc, helps your child learn the facts rather than having to call on their own abilities (that may yet to have been developed) and giving the incorrect label to others body language, facial expressions and will essentially stop the child from reacting on the incorrect interpretations.
Thanks,

Kerri

Sumber: http://autismspectrumwotsnormal.com